Set My Soul in Darkness
by Ajali
Summary: His eyes rolled heavenward, black with desperation, a silent plea for strength from an indifferent God, blood instead of prayer all his tongue could yield. "Fitting, don't you think? The Queen of Torments for committing treason with the Queen of France?" Aramis doesn't escape from Rochefort quite so unscathed as in the show.
1. Silence

Notes:

There were actually three prompts requesting this theme, so it turns out I'm not alone in my depravity. First fic I've written, except for a couple of one-shots ten years ago. As a general warning, if you are not ok with torture in your fic content, go back now. This is unashamed Aramis pain. Very little plot. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Silence

He couldn't stay away, it seemed, like nails lifting the scab time and again from a bothersome wound. He was at the door to the prison cell before the man had been returned from the trial.

"Lying under oath, Musketeer? You have damned your immortal soul."

The condemned man straightened further, wrapped in defiance like a cape, eyes bright with mocking laughter. As if he wasn't being led in chains to his final stay before execution. As if he wasn't surrounded by hostile guards. As if he were somehow greater than the First Minister of France that had just signed his death warrant. Rochefort bristled at the mans lack of humility, the courage of a simple soldier, perhaps too stupid to be afraid. He held his ire, savoured it, pushed it down and added it to the fuel he was yet to use. Rochefort was a patient man.

"You have condemned your lover the queen. I offered you the chance to save her. Now she will pay for your stupidity too. Was she just another conquest for you?" That got a reaction. Aramis stepped forward, shackles clinking as he balled his fists.

"You snake. How long have you been a Spanish agent? You will not succeed. France will know you for the traitor you are!"

Rochefort surged forward at the words, gripped the other man by the lapels of his doublet, allowing a long moment to pass before lifting his hand to cup his captives cheek. He relished the surprise he saw there, the flicker of uncertainty.

"You just can't help yourself, can you? You lie and you lie. With death so near for you, I would have thought it prudent not to stain your soul further. I will help you."

Suddenly, savagely, he struck his captive in the stomach and in the same move, dealt his face a vicious backhand. At a signal, a guard held him fast from behind, the chain between his hands drawn tight across his flat belly as he reeled.

"Silence him." A guard stepped forward, iron gag held before him. There was recognition in Aramis' eyes but nowhere to retreat to as his head was held fast, recoiling, still fighting for air, the barbed plate cracked against his teeth and made him retch where it hit the back of his throat. He surged backward, twisting his head against the invasion but chained and held fast was helpless to stop the device being locked tight around the back of his neck. Jaw stretched uncomfortably around the metal box, the barbs piercing his tongue and holding it down, more scraped painfully against his palette, breath coming short and fast through the tiny breathing hole, Rochefort saw what he had been looking for.

Fear, at last, unsuppressed in those dark eyes, and something inside him clenched in satisfaction.

At a signal the guards stepped back, released the mans arms. Predictably he raised them, fingers scrabbling and tearing at the lock, pulling at the curve of metal that trapped and obscured his jaw. The musketeer tried to speak, tried to spit curses at his tormentor, and Rochefort smiled openly at his flinch when the barbed contraption mangled both his words and his tongue in the attempt. He retched again as the metal pushed into the back of his throat, and a heat ignited in Rochefort's belly at the moment true horror entered the other mans eyes.

Whatever power he'd had in sweet words that had seduced the queen, Rochefort had taken from him. Whatever comfort in prayer for the condemned man, he'd stolen from him. Whatever shields of wit or defiance he'd hoped to guard himself with in his last days had been stripped.

"Not enjoying that? I'm doing this to help you, to preserve your ungrateful soul against your foul lies, Musketeer." He savoured the last word, twisting it as though it were some provoking insult, and paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him, as if he hadn't been looking forward to this moment.

"Although, you're disgraced, a traitor to your king and to France." A huff of protest escaped the muzzled man in front of him, the words landing where he wanted. He stood, still gripping the device that muted him, fingers trying to slip under the rim of the face plate, trying to drag forward the metal in his mouth to ease the pressure against the back of his throat, breath quick and eyes wild.

"No longer a musketeer. Unfit for the uniform of the King. Remove it."

He fought. Of course he fought, too proud to submit to this new humiliation. But there were four guards and he was chained. Flung to the ground and a kick to the face, the iron bridle that wrapped around and inside him twisting, the sound of teeth splitting against the metal, barbed ridges slicing the inside of his mouth and blood pooling in the back of his throat and dribbling to the stone flags below him, brutal kicks to his ribs and belly, crushing the air from his lungs and the chain between his hands grabbed, stretched forward and stepped on, unable to curl in on himself to defend against the violence, the fingers of his right hand caught under a heavy boot and ground against the stone.

Knives slipped under his doublet, sliced through it and was pulled away in ribbons, boots yanked from his feet and leather trews pulled off as well, pauldron slashed away and spat upon. Even so, when the guards pulled away, it didn't take him long before he was trying to rise to his feet.

Awkwardly, injured hand folded to his chest, shirt torn and in disarray and alternating between clawing at the wall of his prison to drag himself up and cradling his damaged face. Rocheforts henchmen were not unscathed. Four against one and still their injuries included a smashed nose, a split lip, a sprained arm.

For a moment Rochefort felt a grudging respect, at his courage, his inability to submit. Before he crushed that feeling. Rochefort was a patient man.

"I will break you," he promised.

A glint of gold in the torchlight, Anne's crucifix still resting against her lovers heart. Cold fury threatened to overwhelm him, at the sight of his gift to HIS Anne when she was still a princess, his pledge of affection, his secret claim on her heart. Squandered, given to this mere soldier, whilst he languished in a Spanish jail. He stepped forward and twisted his hand into the mans dark hair, dragging him upright to hiss in his ear "You dare to flaunt your treasonous affair still?"

Chained hands clutched at his sleeve but a dark gaze met his cold one unflinchingly. His hand slipped down the warm chain to the golden crucifix, fingers caressing the gilt edges.

Rochefort felt his blood stirring at the memory of gifting the fourteen year old bride-to-be with the cross, her guileless eyes wide, rosebud lips and the soft swell of young breasts. The feeling twisted, soured by her recent rejection. A tear slipped his remaining eye and he raised the cross to his lips and kissed it, warm from Aramis' skin.

Those chained hands were trying to push him away now, he realised, disgust rolling off the man before him. He loosed the grip in his hair, only to twist the gold links together around his throat, dragging the chain through the thin rivulets of blood there.

"This should never have been yours. She should have been mine. She should have chosen me," he hissed to the cross in his hand. He reached up to remove the chain from the queens lover, and if the man had fought for his uniform, fought against the humiliation of being muzzled and stripped, it was nothing compared to how he fought for that necklace.

Rochefort was reeling from a fist that thundered across his face and sent to the ground from a savage headbutt that cracked his nose. The guards rushed in and beat Aramis to the flagstone floor, unchecked violence until he was yelping in pain.

"Enough."

Rochefort found himself laughing. The guards dragged their prisoner to his knees, swaying in their grip, one eye swelling, breath hitching. Rochefort reached down and rubbed his thumb through the blood from a split in the other mans temple. Aramis pulled away and his hand tightened cruelly in his hair.

"You are brave, I'll concede that. But it will not avail you."

He was still fighting the bridle, Rochefort noticed, with his left hand. Long fingers curling around the device, questing at the lock, fine tremors running through them as he sought to dislodge it. The fingers of his other hand coiled slack against his chest, misshapen and a livid purple. For the bridle to be taking precedence over his broken hand in this way, the agony it was causing must be exquisite.

He couldn't help the way his breath caught in pleasure at that knowledge. He swiped at the thin trickle of blood from his own nose.

"That was bracing. But for striking the First Minister of France? Bow before me. Bow down." He laughed at the venomous glare the disgraced musketeer shot him.

"I know. Still too proud. Don't worry. I will help you learn your place," he promised him fervently.

"Put this man in strappado," he commanded the guards.


	2. Suspension

He visibly flinched, startling against the hands that held him, released one manacled wrist and refastened it behind his back. A rope was tied to the chain between his hands. His eyes rolled heavenward, black with desperation, a silent plea for strength from an indifferent God, blood instead of prayer all his tongue could yield.

Perhaps it worked. Rochefort watched with interest as first the desperation, then the fear were pulled back from the surface, something else, something harder rushing to fill their space. Aramis met his eyes calmly, displaying nothing but his customary mocking laughter. Though he recognised it as the shield it was, Rochefort couldn't help but bristle at the scorn he felt directed at him. The Musketeer was condemned, kneeling in chains and muzzled before him, yet still he towered over him, _him_ , the First Minister of France. Was this what Anne saw in him? In the knowledge of his own torment and death, he was still unconquered. Defiant. He pulled back his anger. Rochefort was a patient man. "That laughter will be the first thing I take from you," he hissed. "You will know your place soon enough."

He signalled the guard, who pulled the rope fastened to the wall. The rope hooked over a beam set in stone near the ceiling, trailing down to the captives restraints. He gasped as his arms were yanked upwards, scrambling to his bare feet, but he did not break Rochefort's gaze, straight-backed and strong. The guards let him stand, and Rochefort signalled again. His arms raised behind him to the height of his neck now, he was unable to retain his proud stance, shoulders rotated unnaturally at an angle that would soon become painful, his spine arching forward like a cat to compensate, heels lifting upwards to ease the pressure on his arms. Rochefort allowed himself a smile and drew in close, his breath stirring the hair curled round the shell of his ear.

"I told you that you would bow before me." Aramis snarled and lashed out with his foot, catching Rochefort a glancing blow to the shin. There was no power behind it from the angle he was at, like being buffeted by a large cat or a strong breeze, and he laughed as he signalled again.

This time there was no room for his body to compensate and he cried out, short, before swallowing it. His body forced to straighten in his bonds, arms locked at a sharp angle, legs straining as the tips of his toes took his full weight. His eyes watered in pain as the muscles at his shoulder joint, stretched beyond endurance suffered their first tears, and Rochefort pressed his body in close to cup the stricken mans face, thumbs brushing away the water tenderly. Already his breath was coming in sharp pants, his lungs compressed by the weight of his own body, and a wildness was in his eyes as he strained to catch enough air. The iron gag was warm under Rocheforts palms, blood and saliva trickling through the tiny breathing hole to dry in his short beard. Tenderly, he lifted a forefinger and pressed it to the opening, stopping Aramis from drawing breath.

Raw panic crashed through the defences in his eyes as he found what little air he could draw through the crusting blood in his nose was insufficient, he was twisting his head weakly in his strict binds. Rochefort cupped his other hand gently around the nape of his neck, holding his head still even as he spasmed for breath. It took as little strength as pinioning a small bird, he marvelled, and he felt his own breath catch.

All the power in the body under his hands, the skill and strength that had raised him to the pride of the Musketeer regiment, useless. Impotent. It was Rochefort who had the power in the end.

"Everything that drew her to you, Aramis, I will take from you before you die."

He pressed his knee between the other mans thighs, unbalancing him as he tried to twist away. He clenched his hand savagely in his victims hair, pulling his head forward as he pushed hard on the gag. Aramis bucked frantically, choking on blood and metal as the barbs tore deeper into his mouth and throat.

"Your voice. Your strength. Your wit. You are mine now, to do with as I please. As the queen will soon be mine. She should have chosen me."

He pressed his forehead against his prisoners and closed his good eye, holding the tableau for a long moment, wishing it was his queen he could hold this close, this pliantly, imagining the body shuddering against his was his Anne's, and that the movements were her pleasure. Until he felt the other mans weight settle against his thigh, strength spent.

"Don't swoon on me yet, I have so much more to share with you." He stepped back a pace, withdrawing his support but also his hands. Blood rushed through the hole in the front of the iron bridle, bubbling noisily and Aramis was free to breath again, eyes glazed, scarcely conscious, body stretched taut as he tried to find purchase against a floor that was barely there.

This time, when Rochefort reached around his neck to remove the crucifix, he flinched but could offer no resistance, could only watch with tormented eyes. Another sign to the guards, this time it took two of them to haul down the rope and refasten it. This time his toes left the floor, legs kicking and missing the ground by inches, shoulders fully rotated against their nature and the weight beginning to separate the joints, ligaments tearing.

This time, he could not hold back his scream, except that required a deeper breath than he could take, pressure on his lungs prevented enough air to even do that, the muscles of his chest now forming a tight band around his ribs, and all that came out was a helpless keening. Short panting breaths that plumed white in the chill air between them punctuated the sound. Rochefort pressed his hands to the tight muscles of his prisoners belly, feeling his diaphragm spasm, running them up to hold his rivals torso, thrilling at the vibrations from the muted screams and the juddering as the muscles of his ribs strained to lift his entire body to breathe. With a push to set the helpless mans body swinging, he brandished the crucifix.

"Now to pay Queen Anne a visit. She was the only thing I thought of, you know? They would do unspeakable things to my body, and all I could see was her. My saviour in the dark. My saviour in torment. My love." He paused. He had forgotten himself. Forgotten her rejection, so recent the wound in his heart still seeped, as did the wound to his eye. He had sought solace in those memories, comfort in the familiar litany. But reality crashed down on him. The keening from his prisoner continued, distracting him.

"And you took her from me." He wet his lips, shook his head to clear it.

"I must go to the Queen. She will need me. And I must decide what to do with your son." Rochefort turned and left, but fancied he heard a sob before the iron door clanged behind him, leaving Aramis in darkness and torment.


	3. Thaw

She would not look at him, facing the window, and once again he bristled at the humility he could not help but feel in her presence. His Queen, his cold Queen, calculated passivity and frosty exterior, like a winter sun, muted splendour, though refusing to warm the air around him.

So similar to himself, could she not see it?

"I bring you a gift."

Her response this time was very different to the last time he had said that. Then she had been full of laughter and eager curiosity. Now, she did not turn, did not move. Perhaps her back straightened a little. Then she spoke.

"I want nothing from you." Her tone was clipped, not a hint of emotion in it, except scorn. It was more scorn than words.

He moved forward a pace, stepping around her to enter her peripheral view.

"You may want to reconsider. I am returning a gift." He held the crucifix up, the chain coiling behind his fingers and the ruby studded cross catching in the sunlight, throwing rich flashes through the air as it swung.

He saw the moment curiosity and dread made her glance at his fingers. Something flickered across those regal features, the beginnings of expressions that her training subdued. She betrayed herself though, by not taking her eyes off the cross, gold set with red and a patina of blood coating it.

"He is already dead then?" Cracks were appearing in her frosted veneer, grief sharpened her voice. Rochefort savoured it for a long moment.

"No, but soon."

She inhaled sharply. "The blood?"

"He hangs, muzzled and in strappado in his prison cell. Fitting, don't you think? The Queen of Torments for committing treason with the Queen of France?"

She had to find a seat then, her legs failing under the burden of knowledge.

"You are to be his executioner then? As you were judge and jury?"

There it was. A fierceness she had not carried before. Had the careless fire of her lover thawed her a little? Kindled her living flesh beneath the cool exterior of refinement and obedience? She had not thawed for him.

They were the same, he and his Queen. Could she not see that?

"No. I will cut him down before he suffocates. A death like Christ's is hardly fitting for a traitor. And when I am finished with him, he will go broken to his death. He is fierce and strong and I will break him. And all of France will see how I have tamed your wild Musketeer."

Her hands twitched as if to hide her face, but she was too well-trained for that. She would not break so easily, his queen.

"This is madness, Rochefort," she breathed.

"No," he crooned. "It is love. Love is pain and torment."

She smiled then, tremulous and sad, and it was not thoughts of he that coaxed a break in her carved visage.

"It is no such thing."

He was kneeling before her now, hands hovering but not daring to touch her. Not yet. The pieces weren't in place yet. Tenderly he let the crucifix swing between them, blood and gold flashed blinding into his remaining eye.

"This is the price of your love."

He tossed the bloodied crucifix to her silk-clad thighs. She did not move but he felt her recoil.

"My love for you is an agony worse than any torture," he continued "and he should suffer no less."

He searched her face for the cracks he knew must be forming, but found nothing. There was no proof to be had there. Frustrated, he stood and turned a pace or two, unable to bear her stoic silence. He had laid his soul bare to her, he had tried to hurt her, to repay his own pain with the details of his vengeance, and he still could not touch her.

No matter, he could touch something of hers. He could hurt something of hers. She didn't have to show it for him to know the agony she was suffering. The same agony he felt at the knowledge of the carnal pleasures his Queen and her Musketeer had shared. It should have been him. Could she not see?

He turned back to her, to plead for her affection once more, to see her sculpted hands had moved, still in her lap but covering the crucifix, as if to shield it, as if to protect it from him. Proof if ever he needed it. The rage he had trammelled within him spilled over. He saw it now. She would never love him. Aramis would always eclipse him, with the smile in his eyes and his free and easy laugh, the daring of a soldier, the vitality of his body, the famed skill with his hands with battlefield surgery, sharpshooting, women. His lower status didn't matter, his unsuitability didn't matter, the fact that he could offer nothing didn't matter. He drew women to him like moths to a burning torch and that had stolen his Queen from him.

He was fire and she was ice and they should have destroyed each other, yet they had not, so now he had to do it. But even when he died his memory would eclipse Rochefort. Something savage thundered through him, all the hell of destructive emotions that he had been saving for when they were useful.

"I must unmake him then."

Death would not destroy what he is now, but to be unmade and the broken vessel displayed mewling before death, perhaps that image would eclipse the memory of the hero, the romantic, the courtier. If everyone's last memory of Aramis was horror, he could no longer eclipse Rochefort. The spell would be broken and Anne would see him for who he truly was, would look at him with new eyes and an open heart.

But first, Aramis must be unmade. It was always going to come to this, he mused. But first, he must not be allowed to slip away in gentle suffocation. His vengeance would come to nought if he were to die so soon.

"I will unmake him," he re-avowed, pitched loud enough for her ears, and exited the room, leaving her aching in his wake.


	4. Follow Me Down (To Hell)

She startled when she heard his footsteps approach, and by the time he loomed dark in the doorway her belly surged under the cruel grip of nausea. His voice was quiet and his colourless eye cold and she barely heard him over the rushing of her heart in her ears.

"Come."

"But...the Dauphin!" Her voice was weak, she hated how thin it sounded, how her protests were more of a query.

"Leave the Royal Bastard and come with me. Obey."

His tone was hard, she dare not refuse, so she laid the sleeping infant in his cradle and followed Rocheforts retreating form.

At the entrance to the prison she faltered, fearful of the place.

"Where are we going?"

He made no reply, did not even turn to look at her, so sure of her obedience was he. As though a cord bound her to him, she followed again, tugged along helplessly as if he were the devil and the door was the entrance to hell. She shuddered as she passed over the threshold, unwilling yet unable to make her body refuse as the darkness swallowed her. Her feet faltered in the darkness, but he was silhouetted against a distant torch, so she followed reluctantly, lifting her silks to keep them from the dank flagstones. Torches and turns and corridors later, Rochefort stopped, and was in conversation with a guard posted outside a door by the time she had caught up.

"Where are we going?" she repeated. She tried to put more force in her voice but it died before it left her throat, sounding more like a whine to her ears, and she hated it.

"To see what we have created." He looked at her then, studying her, but she could not hold his gaze. Fortunately he was distracted by the door clanging open. He strode through, into the cell, and she felt like she could breathe again. She hesitated a moment, he had not said to follow him but he hadn't told her to stay. Reluctantly she entered the room as he was placing a torch into a sconce set in the stone wall, to illuminate the deep cell.

And she recoiled in horror. A little scream escaped her, for a heartbeat she thought a corpse swung before her, hanging from the ceiling. As her eyes adjusted she saw he hung from chains at his wrists, not rope around the neck. And then a new horror hit her and she tried to retreat from the knowledge, from the awful reality.

It was Aramis. Her sweet Aramis, who had made her know love and taken it away again, who held her tenderly and betrayed her terribly, who shadowed her every thought despite her pain. Here, bloodied and chained and twisted horribly from the rafters, still as death except a faint mist before him in the bitter cold of the dungeon and she shrieked as Rochefort enfolded her from behind, preventing her retreat, and she couldn't run away from the nightmare before her, forced to take in every awful detail.

"No, do not turn away. You must look at what we created, Marguerite."

"What we...I don't understand. I did not do this!" She cried, tears making tracks down her cheeks again, tears again, she felt like she had been crying forever.

"Your testimony sealed his fate. You know his sentence. Do you think the punishment required for high treason is gentle or easy? You did this as much as me." His voice a sibilance, was the devil this persuasive?

She felt his palm strike her face, and yelped although there wasn't enough force to hurt.

"Do not close your eyes. Look." He commanded. She hadn't even realised her eyes were closed.

"Look!" he barked. And so she did, trembling at the sight before her.

His white shirt was bibbed red with blood, but she could not tell from where it came. It was torn to expose his flank, heavy bruising marring his junction of his ribs. His feet were bare, dangling slack nearly a foot from the stone, his hands were purple and the shape of claws and his torso was twisted oddly, head caught between his arms and resting on his chest, dark curls hiding his face.

Slowly, so slowly the ropes were turning him round, she could see now a wide iron band across his mouth, locked at the base of his skull, a thin ooze of bloody saliva slid from a hole in the centre to wet his chest. His eyes were half open, and locked on hers, agony rolling off him.

Her hands fluttered to cover her mouth, unable to articulate the awful feelings she contained. Rochefort was still wrapped around her like a lover, without his strength she might have fallen.

"Magnificent, is it not," he breathed. It was not a question.

"His body is a canvas for our revenge."

"I never wanted this," she sobbed.

"Of course you did. He took your honour and used you, he lied to you, he sullied you and tore out your heart and crushed it. He hurt you. He deserves this."

"No-one deserves this." It was scarcely a whisper.

"You don't believe that. Now he knows what it's like to suffer. Now he will know our pain."

She did not even try to break his unwelcome grip. There was no point. She couldn't free herself from his arms any more than she could free her heart of Aramis.

"What have you done to him? Why is he bleeding?"

"Insults and lies were all he would say, so I took away his voice. That gag is used during the trials of heretics in Spain to stop their screams interrupting the auto de fe. This one is modified after the fashion of the branks, and is set with spikes. They gouge the tongue and the roof of his mouth. A perpetual wound, for as long as the muzzle is worn."

His voice was breathless with joy, the words caressed lovingly, and she shuddered at the touch of a creature so dark.

"He cannot speak. He cannot swallow. He can only hang there and bleed."

His breath misted out and wrapped around her, she couldn't help but inhale it, share his air, and she could feel the rot at Rocheforts core contaminate her too.

"The pain, I'm told, is maddening. Once tasted, people will do anything to avoid it again."

She would stop her ears if she could, but she couldn't break that agonised gaze, his pain tangible in the air, thick and cold as the scant vapour from his lungs. He was completely aware, and completely helpless.

She felt frozen, time felt frozen, the moment seemed endless, awful, her whole life contracting around this one moment and it felt like reality would never expand to include anything else again.

Then Aramis spasmed.

And time started again.

He spasmed again, and all at once she realised there was no mist between them, no breath expelled.

"He's not breathing!" she cried.

"No. He can't."

"Why?"

"He has to lift his whole body to take a breath, and the muscles he must use are spent."

"But he is so strong," she whispered.

"He's been there near an hour. Exhaustion is taking him. And when it does he will suffocate." There was a sick glee in his voice.

She moved, somehow. Flung herself to her knees at her former lovers feet, wrapping her thin arms around his calves and trying to lift him, straining to take his weight herself.

At first, nothing, then she felt him weakly press against her, rallying through his exhaustion to lift himself up, to take the air denied to him. He managed two breaths before Rochefort snarled a hand in her hair and flung her bodily to the ground. She still had hold of Aramis body and there was a yelp as he was jolted, the air she had helped him take wasted, body set swinging helplessly.

Rochefort snapped his fingers and two guards moved to the rope at the wall, she hadn't even noticed them in the room before, her fear and Aramis' pain eclipsing all else. They pulled, the rope creaked and he was hoisted towards the ceiling, four feet, six, eight.

"Let him down," she begged, hiccuping on her words.

"Please, just let him down."

"Please, just let him down!" Rochefort repeated, mocking. He gripped her upper arm and helped her to her feet.

"Of course," he replied, his lips split in a devils smile. A whine, an actual whine came from the figure twisting above them, she didn't understand why. She sagged in relief when Rochfort raised a hand to the guards, four fingers extended.

Aramis dropped.

But not to the ground. His fall had been stopped four feet from the ground, his full weight crashing onto his damaged shoulders, crashing through them, and the sound he made as his joints ruptured brought her to her knees.

Rochefort was laughing with the other men, she was crying, but underpinning the awful symphony was a sound like that of a dying dog she had once seen crushed under the wheel of a carriage. Half blinded by tears, she did not see Rochfort move, but she did see Aramis drop again, this time to the unforgiving floor, striking his heel and his hip and his brow as his feet failed to find purchase.

She scrambled to his ragged form, bloody and shuddering, breath white and rapid now his lungs were released, and with that release the freedom to voice his pain, guttural peals she feared would never stop.


	5. Strike

N _otes: Medieval torture accuracy ahoy - according to several sources including 'Torture and Democracy' and a few medical journals dealing with the physiological effects of torture, bastinado really does have that affect on the nerves. Bastinado or falaka is still common today especially in the middle east, particularly in areas where they want to hurt prisoners but don't want huge human rights issues, so ones at least aspiring to trade and inclusions into western commerce. Done carefully the most physical signs are largely undetectable to the casual observer after a couple of days._

 _Countries which aren't involved in the opinions of the West don't give a monkeys and usually leave visible torture signs on ther victims to subdue and terrorise the population._

 _This chapter really did require wrestling to the ground. Worryingly, I am struggling to get into anybody's head except Rocheforts. But perhaps he's the closest to the narrator as he is the only one with any real knowledge about what's going on._

Chapter five: Strike

She hovered ineffectually over his stricken frame, wanting to soothe and comfort, wanting to help but afraid to hurt him further. Rochefort was beside her again like a solid darkness, his satisfaction a living thing that was feeding off the flesh of his subjects before him. Aramis was still making a terrible sound, rough and animalistic, the noise chafing at her soul, his eyes squeezed shut. Her hands landed feather-light against his spine but dared not do more, his cries traveling through her fingers into her heart.

Rocheforts hands were suddenly on hers, then under and around, and he scraped her fingers up her former lovers flesh to the junction of his shoulders, corded and misshapen, the rounded end of his bone a prominent lump.

"It's a pain unlike anything he is used to. There's no defence against it, nothing to brace against. It threatens the integrity of the body at the same time as the suffocation attacks the mind, suffusing it with terror. Slow suffocation can break even the strongest men."

His voice was calm, almost reverent. She felt sick.

"Shall we hoist him up again or shall we pick something else?"

Mutely she shook her head, trying to understand what he was asking of her.

"No," she whispered.

"Again then."

He released her then, firming his grip instead on his prisoner and rolling him over to face them. There was a muffled thump and mercifully the dreadful noise from Aramis stopped.

"Hmm, the shoulder has righted itself." He sounded almost regretful. "No matter."

He rose and left her, but his darkness remained. She collapsed over Aramis, his cries stilled now but his body trembling, pain or cold set his flesh quivering beneath her.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she gasped. "I didn't mean for...I couldn't stop him...I never wanted...I'm sorry!" Her brow was pressed to his dark curls and he lay panting under her, helpless to respond. Soon, too soon, and the demon she had sold her soul to was once more at her back, fingers curling into her flesh.

"Get him up," softly, voice saturated with a smile. "We will drop him again."

She felt a thrill of fear in the body beneath her, perhaps she heard him choke on the syllable for 'no' or perhaps that was her. She couldn't watch that again and she pushed away the men grasping at Aramis with her little strength. She felt herself being lifted by her throat and she half hoped Rochefort might kill her for her sins and then she wouldn't have to watch what they were doing to her proud soldier.

Impossibly, Aramis intervened. Aramis saved her.

He lashed out with his feet, driving into Rocheforts knee, his eyes black with the knowledge of the retribution he was earning but snarling his defiance anyway. Rochefort released the grip he had in her hair and throat and she stumbled from him, shrinking away even as he advanced like a demon upon the man chained defenceless at his feet.

"You will regret that," he promised, unable to keep his dark desires from his voice. At first Aramis bravery had inspired him, but now it angered him, the mans steadfast refusal to break. What horrors did he have to visit upon him before the man would yeild? He was exhausted and afraid, he could see it in the tremors that shook his prone frame, the apprehension in his eyes, but somehow had the gall to provoke him further. He kicked him, once, twice, aiming for the tender flesh of his belly and rewarded as he folded beneath his boot.

"You won't do that again," he hissed. "You won't be able to do that again. Bring me a pole."

His hands twitched, perhaps attempting to form a fist and Aramis inhuman defiance broke the last restraints he had on his temper. What would it take to douse this wretch's fire? He fell on him, took his legs and looped a rope around them, around again and through, pulling tightly, the cord was thin and would cut him quickly if he struggled. He would struggle.

Rochefort grasped the proffered pole, the length of a man and the thickness of a wrist, and lashed his victims ankles to the centre before letting the wood clatter to the floor. Aramis gazed up in pain and confusion, pulling awkwardly at his bonds, the wood grating clumsily across the stone.

"Please, please, you have won, you've got what you want. Please leave him alone!" The woman was wailing again, distraught at the war between their desire and who she thought she was.

"Nobody else will offer you your vengeance. You should thank me for what I offer you. Now unless you desire to take his place, be silent." She quieted, and he turned to his prey.

He had fancied Anne the Guinevere to his Lancelot but now he knew that to be a dream. He could not even claim to be Arthur. Aramis was Lancelot, he was the villain, and if villain he was cast then villain he would be and as the treasonous lovers of old perished, so must they.

Thoughts of strappado gone, a desire for blood in its place, he recalled his own dread at being subjected to this next torment, and though they had taken care not to break his skin too often, years later he still suffered from the pain after long days on his feet. He would take no such care with Aramis.

"There is something special about this next one," he found himself telling Marguerite. The poor girl was sobbing wretchedly over the Musketeer, clearly broken by her love for the fool.

"In Spain they call this bastinado. Most places of the body, when o'er-stimulated with pain, recognise it and silence those messages," he continued. He was not so broken but felt no less damaged by his Anne. He just wanted her to fix him as she had promised so often in his dreams.

"The soles of the feet, like the chambers of the heart, have no such defence against damage. And each time they are hit, the pain worsens. It intensifies, and kindles the nerves in all the rest of the body until it feels like your soul has been set aflame. Until you are screaming with every touch. Any touch."

He shuddered then, memory and anticipation and lust forming an unholy alliance in his blood. Feet and heart. You don't notice the importance of either until they are damaged. Broken.

He watched Marguerite with interest as she battled with herself, between the sweet succour of vengeance and the social mores of her sex, being gentle and kind did not marry well with the bloodlust he was awakening in her.

His well-trained guards lifted the wood and braced it between them at the height of their waists, and Rocheforts world narrowed to himself and Aramis. The first stroke fell, a dry slap against the arches of his feet. Aramis didn't react, just watched him carefully. Another stroke, and another, and the fourth one elicited a gasp. By the sixth strike, carefully layered across the first purpling welt, there was a grunt from the helpless man and he could see by the surprise on his face that the pain was starting the relentless seep up through his legs, intensifying beyond expectation or reason. The next few hits were accompanied by soft grunts and curse the man, he was swallowing down his pain more stoically than anyone he had ever known.

He swung again but missed, feeling the tiny bones in the toes crack under the rod and at last, at last it drew the first real scream from Aramis. Rochefort's blood thrilled at the sound. Driven on with renewed vigour, he lost himself in his task, the screams a rousing melody to the strikes of wood on flesh, a rhythm only he could predict, his own sweat on his brow, the sweet burn of muscle in his arm, the recoil shuddering through his limb and bursting into his heart.

The body before him contorting weakly, a fish on a line, a dying rabbit in a snare, trying mindlessly to retreat from the pain, strikes carrying racing fire through his stromata, flesh striped purple and haemorrhaging under the skin, now, finally, a split under the flash of wood, and another, the integuments of his feet parting under the violence.

He stopped. Panting, his arm burning with exertion and ears ringing with lust and blood and joy, he finally felt satiation. His long plan and longer pain, and at last he felt alive. He looked to find Margeurite, to share his joy with her, only to hear her footsteps running from him, from this room, wailing piteously through the stone corridors. He drew his knife, slashed the bloodied ropes, uncaring that he nicked skin and let the tortured limbs fall to the stone below, then knelt to cradle his captives cheek.

Aramis cringed from him like a beaten dog, tears in his eyes, high moans shivering the frigid air, his body rippling with the pain that coursed his nerves still, skin confused under the onslaught and interpreting every touch as pain.

"Five years, they left me," he whispered. "I was strong. I was loyal. And they left me at the mercy of the Spanish. They took so much from me. And when I was released, I found you. You, with Spanish blood and fickle French honour, and you took my queen from me. The one thing the Spanish could not take from me and they still managed it after all, because of you."

He paused to swallow, to reign in his pain.

"I shall have my revenge. You are my revenge. You think you have suffered today? Tomorrow is your last dawn. You will be taken from here to be broken on the wheel of Saint Catherine. They will smash your limbs with iron, your bones will splinter and pierce your skin. The marrow in your thighs will leak into the sunlight and they will braid your ruined body through the spokes of the wheel. And you will lie there, alive and rotting under the sky before all the eyes of Paris, rats and ravens feasting on your flesh until God sees fit to dispose of you."

He released him then, choking on horror at his fate, and left him to the care of the prison guards.

Notes: Also, the description of breaking on the wheel is amalgamated from 17th century court records and a couple of witness descriptions.

Does anybody have anything really nice and fluffy to read in order to wash my head clean of my own writing?


	6. Dawn

Authors _note: I need to address the reviews left by Anonymous and Guest on chapter 5. Let me start by saying I really appreciate the reviews you have left me. This may come as a surprise to you, but I am really pleased that those were your reactions. Humans are nasty. There are many places today where human rights are ignored and abused. Even by governments supposed to be 'civilised'. To ascertain accuracy in my writing, as well as remain authentic to the time, I did a lot of research into human rights abuses, and the history and progression of democracy, evidence and law._

 _The torture I've described here is still going on today. Two deaths in strappado in a prison under American control, perpetuated by American troops, in 2006. Bastinado, or fallaka, is popular in Middle Eastern regimes and prisons. It's usually governed by rules, but abuses and excesses do happen. I've read physiology documents and autopsy reports. At least one death from suffocation in a mutes bridle in an American prison (Eastern State Penitentiary - Mathias Maccumsey) Happened in 1833._

 _Medieval punishment was even worse. I've read the translation of court records for sentences such as breaking on the wheel from 17th century France. I've read witness reports. I've read the transcripts kept by some of the Spanish Inquisition. I've also researched the physiology of dehydration, asphyxiation, shock, blood loss. The tortures I've described here are actually carefully chosen to be the least gruesome whilst being coherent within the culture and ways of thinking. Basically, I've kept this pretty vanilla._

 _My point is, I am GLAD reading this hurts you. It's not meant to be nice. It's meant to raise the bar and make you glad that we live in the here and now. And hopefully make you a little more aware that there are currently people suffering under this treatment, these techniques. Today. What politicians are telling us is 'enhanced interrogation techniques', the Inquition called torture. This next chapter involves a stress position. Think on that when you next hear it on the news about Guantanamo bay._

 _If you choose to stick with the story, anyone who has been following me on AO3 will know I've also raised the bar on comfort. If you don't choose to stay, then I'm sorry that too much reality badly affected your reading experience. I'm sorry that knowing a sliver of what people in medieval Europe would have endured, with no hope of fair trials or evidence based punishments, has made you recoil. Torture is not meant to be endurable. It wouldn't be employed so readily if it was comparable to a mild discomfort or an easily-shrugged-off pang._

 _I've made sure the techniques described are the tamest ones available. But hear this. I read to know. I won't prescribe to you how or why you should read. But I read for knowledge, not pleasure._

 **Dawn**.

She came to them in the moonlight, his black-haired wife, all his hopes and fears and joy and pain residing in her silver skin. Aramis was not with her. She was speaking before the question could be asked.

"He lives still, but he cannot walk and I cannot carry him."

"What do mean he cannot walk?" His own voice was ice, and it laved over the angry rumble from Porthos.

Her lip curled in distaste, whether at him or in memory he could not tell.

"Did you ever think Rochefort would be satisfied by a public execution? The man is mad with bloodlust."

"If he's hurt him I'm gonna-"

She cut across Porthos' threats. "He is hurt. And he is out of time. He is to be taken at dawn to the wheel of Catherine."

"Dawn is in a few hours," he said calmly. Very, very calmly. It didn't disguise the pained moan from d'Artagnan.

"And we are a few hours from Paris. We are wasting time discussing it. I need your strength," she said to Porthos. The big man nodded, their past troubles with Athos' wife immaterial. She would help return their stolen brother, nothing else could ever matter.

She pressed her silken body to her husband, but it wasn't a seduction.

Her voice too low for any but he to hear. "We may be too late," she whispered for his ears alone. Those words carried his brother's death.

"The Wheel is an awful death," he said, grief strangling his voice. "It can take days to die. If we can't save him..." he could not finish, the words felt like prophecy.

"Then we must kill him," she finished, simply.

He nodded, he felt like Judas but God help him he nodded "We cannot be late." He didn't bother to hide his fear.

"How are we to succeed?" Constance's voice, trembling but strong. "After you snatched me from the executioners block Rochefort will be doubly on his guard."

"I have but one idea," he began carefully, before spitting. "And it is useless. We have not the numbers nor the time." Defeat tasted like ashes on his tongue.

She audibly smirked then, that she-devil in an angels skin and he turned on her snarling. She turned into his fury, fearless. "The plan has already started."

He felt surprise painted ridiculous across his face and was glad for the darkness. Either God was smiling on them for once or she truly was a sorceress, to know his every thought before even he did. He crushed her to him in a fierce kiss and tasted blood as her teeth broke his lip in equal passion.

"Will it work?" his young protégé asked, impatient.

"We are probably all going to die." He turned, remounting his horse.

"To Paris!" he cried, the others echoing him.

They could have left him curled and cold on the damp stone, fettered and beaten, for the rest of the day and the long night before his execution.

They didn't. They had hoisted him to his blasted feet and tightened the rope to his chains. He could endure standing, or sink to his knees and wrench his arms. His body was at the end of its endurance. His arms were useless meat, the chains part of him now, embedded in his skin, the strings to his broken marionette. His body was wracked with tremors, thin shirt and braes no protection from the winter chill, his flesh the same temperature as his stone tomb.

One eye swollen nearly shut, blood from his temple rusting together the lashes of the other, he could just make out the dark marks of his own bloody footprints chequering the flagstones before him, illustrating the battle between the pain of his shoulders and the searing of his feet before exhaustion chose the outcome of the fight and tumbled him to his knees anyway. He longed for oblivion but his pain forced him to stay awake, thighs burning as he forced his body to kneel sharply upright.

He had tried to regain his feet but had only fallen, repeatedly, and drawn the guards laughter with his screams, so now he knelt, his legs locked trembling beneath him, but it had been hours and they had begun to fail. When they did his arms would take the strain, wrenched upwards and with nothing to hold the bones together would separate, again, so, choking on agony he would force his legs out of their exhausted cramping to hold him up once more. But the time they could support him shortened in waves, his body rocking between the two agonies, oscillating between one hell and another and unable to find a balance.

Hours later, his body utterly spent, his legs would not respond and his world contracted to the inescapable burning across his shoulders and the tendrils that snaked down and wrapped his lungs. The air was thick and hard to draw, and dimly he recognised that with his air so restricted he may not survive until tomorrow, tomorrow when they would kill him, and he wondered why he still fought, why he did not let himself suffocate and thus grant himself a kinder death.

He tried to shield his heart with the memories of his brothers, but found he could not recall their faces. He may have wept then, except his blood was thick and empty from days of no sustenance, two without water, longer without food, and would not spare the water for tears.

He tried to galvanise his soul with prayers learned at the lap of his mother but the constant pain in his mouth sparked to new agonies when he tried to speak, and he tasted iron and salt and he remembered dimly that he should not speak.

There were no prayers, no memories, no past and no future, only now, only him and his pain, alone in the circle of light from the torch, the only thing against him and the blackness, the only sign of Gods love.

Then it flickered and went out.

He sobbed then, for of course he had been found unworthy by the Almighty, wretched sinner that he was though he could not remember his sins at this time. Alone with his pain, even God had forsaken him, and the torment in his flesh the only sign that he wasn't dead already, or did it confirm his death? For the floor was ice below him and his body fire above and maybe they had killed him, his soul rejected from his God and residing now in hell.

Ghosts came out of the darkness then, some to save him, some to kill him, and Marsac's ghost with snow in his beard and black feathers in his hair to sit by him and weep the tears he could not, his touch was ice.

Hours later, they came for him. The torch they brought into his black cell blinded him and he knew they were real because he couldn't see them like he could the ghosts. He faintly remembered that the next time he saw light would be the herald of his death, the day of his execution. He was broken already, he wasn't sure they needed to break him on the wheel. He didn't want to die but he had not the strength to live.

Hands raised his face, but he couldn't see in the searing light, thumbs gentle over his the ridge of his eye, but Rochfort was always at his most gentle before hurting him the worst. He flinched as the bridle was jolted, choked as it briefly hit the back of his throat. He wanted to pull away, he couldn't bear to be touched, but he was still helplessly pinioned in his bonds. Words were being exchanged above him but he couldn't make sense of them, and then the chains fell away.

He crumpled as he was freed, the strings to his broken puppet cut, and there were arms around him, he was cradled against someone's chest, his nose filling with the scent of leather and sweat and gunpowder. Some memory sparked but skittered away before he could find it. It didn't matter, he supposed, he would be dead soon. Someone was tugging at the back of the gag, it tightened inside him and his mouth flared painfully, no strength left to stifle the whimper it brought, a voice spat something angrily and he cringed.

He was lifted to his feet, did they expect him to walk to his death after what they had done to him? He started laughing at that, laughing as he took a pace, the sound ghoulish and mad and it turned to screams soon enough as the bones of his feet ground together in a way they were never meant to. The elevation sent his head spinning anyway and he remembered no more as his body folded again, falling, falling, falling down to hell.

The floor was wooden and shifting and the world suffused with light, but crusted blood and swollen flesh robbed him of his sight. Carted to his death, or perhaps already placed on the wheel and he was denied his last sight of Gods creation. Someone had arranged his arms on the wooden slats in front of him, (not yet the wheel) curled up by his face, and whilst one lay unresponsive, the left spasmed weakly and he used it to paw at the metal in his mouth.

His fingers wouldn't move, wouldn't bend, but he was desperate, the iron was becoming part of him, flesh and rust forming some awful union inside him and the thought set a screaming fear in his mind, so he forced his damaged limb to batter at his face, to push at the device, but all it did was twist inside him.

Someone nearby was whining, he supposed it must have been him, but he couldn't stop despite the pain, he had to dislodge it before it soldered itself to the inside of his mouth, he could feel the heat of it as it tried, and he couldn't stop it and he couldn't stop trying.

A hand descended, wrapped around his, voices at and around him but they were stopping him and it was hurting and he had to get it out. He fought with all his strength, but there wasn't any strength left, and the voice became more urgent, the hands on him became firmer and he couldn't bear to be touched, he couldn't take any more pain, he was pain made flesh, hands were lifting him and he tried to tell them he would do anything if they would only stop touching him but he had forgotten that he must not speak.

He laughed at forgetting such a thing but it came out a broken sob. Someone was cursing and his terror amplified, he couldn't get enough air, the device was killing him, someone was screaming and then something tightened against his throat, everything hurt, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, he whited out in terror and the world fell away, his soul sent screaming into the black.


	7. Fury

Notes:

Chapter warnings: Purple Prose. So much purple.

Chapter Text

"This plan of yours," began Porthos, a low rumble over the hoofbeats.

"The Musketeer regiment," Athos started to reply.

"The Trojan war," Milady said at the same time, then she gave a silver laugh."Without Athos and Treville to curb their rowdy behaviour, they have been brawling and drunk. The more truculent are cooling their heels in prison. A few more by now, I imagine, once I met with them."

The silence was palpable, powerful, and ripe with respect. Athos felt warm with a rush of pride.

"Rochefort has them right where they are needed!" d'Artagnan breathed, hope kindling in his voice.

"We break in, free the first cells, they will release the rest and we can locate Aramis. They are not held for anything corporal, and Aramis is well loved by all the regiment." It was the truth, down to the bones, and Athos held their skeletal plan like a talisman. So much to go wrong, and so little to stop it, he could only look forwards. They would probably be slain before even gaining entry to the prison. But he would never say as much.

"It's not enough." d'Artagnan again, and Athos would have punched him if he could reach, of course it wasn't enough but Aramis was out of time and they were out of options. He must have snarled, because d'Artagnan held up a hand to him placatingly.

"We may gain the prison easily enough but leaving it so burdened will be another tale. Even if half the Musketeer regiment are imprisoned, Rochefort will have enough Red Guard nearby to overwhelm us. He will be expecting something. We need to secure the exit, and if Rochefort has had Aramis moved? We have to secure the route to...the route he'll be taken."

The boy couldn't say 'execution' and Athos understood. Another surge of pride pushed through him and though he thought he could see the turns his protégés agile mind had taken he still asked "What do you propose?" His answer was a grin in his dark face, white and fierce.

"Leave that to me. Just get him out."

The moon was a silver scar, hung low in the sky. The stars were scattered teeth or chips of bone and the first of the new day was bruising the horizon as they parted ways and Athos cast aside the thought that it was a sign.

His wife's wiles got them through the gate. The man just saw beauty in the fading night and died for it. Athos wondered if he would always be as helpless around her. In the guard room Porthos let free his awesome rage and broke heads upon the stone walls and Milady relieved them of their keys.

The first passages of the prison was lined with open-faced cells barred with iron grates, and held faces they knew. They were all angry, young and quarrelsome, and they were all ready to aid them. Porthos tossed them a set of keys whilst Athos briefed them of their plan, and a few nodded respectfully towards Milady, and Athos wondered if anything was possible in this strange new world he's found himself in before shaking free of such thoughts and leading down the smokey-torched passages, deeper into the prison.

Only one door was guarded, and at last they had found him. Porthos made short and silent work of the unprepared man and Milady twisted the key in the lock and let him pass.

Athos felt pieces of his soul tear loose at the vision of horror before him. He pressed a hand without looking to Porthos' broad chest, a warning, or to spare him for but a moment, or to borrow strength from his most stalwart comrade for himself, or to ground them both - any and all.

A questioning rumble "Is he alive?" under his fingertips and he swallowed against the fury that reared feral in his throat and he stepped forward into hell, pulling Porthos with him.

Aramis was a broken bird in white and scarlet, wings outstretched above and behind him tipped with claws, black head hung low.

"What's wrong with his hands?" They shared a thrill of horror. Of course Porthos asked. Porthos who had won small fortunes gambling on the surety of those hands in shooting competitions, who had placed his love and life and laughter in those clever fingers in wine and fruit soaked evenings and battlefield surgery, perhaps more often than Athos. It was his wife that answered from her stance at the doorway.

"The nerves have been damaged. Get him down now."

'Now' meaning 'it might be too late' and 'he may never use his hands again' and Athos was grateful she had not said as such out loud. She pressed the keys to Porthos' hands.

A ripple of awareness passed through his fallen brother as the torchlight touched him but he was too weak to raise up, his proud head bowed low and body folded, kneeling, surrendered, yet suspended from his arms at an impossible angle, unable to fall, unable to rise.

The chill flagstones around him scattered over with smudged footprints, the marks red and black in the torchlight, a bloody dance. Porthos staggered against him and he knew he had seen it too.

He knelt and took Aramis' face with infinite gentleness, confused when his fingers closed over metal, then shaking as rage rose snapping as comprehension dawned, here his brother, muzzled like a dangerous beast, enforced silence a singularly personal punishment for Aramis, a man of song and soft prose, wit and words, poetry and prayer and to take that away in his darkest hours? The cruel device a precision blow against his humanity, reduced to wordless screams like a base animal and denied even to beg for mercy.

They had come for their stolen brother, but here was a vision in blood and iron. He was not recognisable as his dashing comrade, and Athos was sure he didn't recognise them with one eye swollen near shut and the other so thick with drying blood the lashes could not part.

"My brother, what have they done to you?" He eased the pads of his thumbs over that beaten brow, mindful of the split in his temple, and was sure his heart broke when Aramis flinched. He tugged briefly at the awful gag but Aramis choked and twisted weakly.

"Nearly there," Porthos croaked. "Brace him." The big mans voice was improbably calm.

"Rochefort will suffer for this," he responded.

"Later," was the reply, a brittle calm poured over terrible grief. Together, they lowered Aramis' twisted arms back through their natural rotation, fearful of what damage might be there. He collapsed against Athos, who caught him tenderly, cradling him to his breast as if he could ease the tremors in that freezing flesh, body as cold as the stone they knelt on.

Porthos' scarred hand eased gently into those dark curls, matted now with blood, and snagged the back of the iron band, seeking the lock. Aramis keened at the movement, a broken whimper, and Athos saw tears glisten in Porthos eyes.

"Bastard!" he swore. "There's no key for this. And the light is poor." He was fumbling for his lock picks anyway.

"We don't have time." His wife at the doorway still, voice clear and sharp, a pistol in each hand for their defence.

"Are you so heartless?" Porthos snapped at her.

"If you'd rather free his voice than save his life, by all means, but I'll not die with you." Her stance was changing, as if to leave them.

Her voice gentled "It's been there over a day. An hour more won't make a difference. Let us leave, give him a chance at life."

She was right, they both knew it, there was shouting in the halls, but his heart remonstrated at knowingly letting his brother suffer on, and he swore viciously. And regretted it instantly as Aramis cringed helplessly in his arms.

"She's not wrong. We must leave. Help me get him up." Together they raised him to his bloody feet, and were sickened by the sound he made, a bitter parody of laughter stretched tight and thin over agony before he staggered a pace and the agony broke through and he fell senseless against them.

The formidable strength of Porthos saved them, though their brother was a man grown he lifted him as if he were a sickly child, great hands fisted in his own doublet to brace the precious burden in his arms.

Athos caught his brothers bloodied head as it lolled senseless back and positioned it carefully against Porthos' shoulder, hateful metal gleaming in the torchlight where there had been joyous smile.

His wife still in the doorway, impatience sparked off her skin, her scant humanity stretched thin (he did that to her) he recognised, another guilty blow. He and Anne, husband and wife, coursed the way, senses primed and keen, them against the enmity their stone surrounding symbolised, and something feral sang glorious in his veins at his own wife that he had killed was standing firm and fierce to defend his family.

Porthos, faithful Porthos, followed them, the vengeance in his skin suppressed, entrusted to he and the devil in his wife, and then at last, the resistance he should have feared all along. Whatever fearsome rage his brother had was carefully gentled to tend their fallen comrade, and Athos would never mention the gleaming tears that tracked into Porthos' beard.

Opposition, at last, and rationally he feared it, feared that they would not succeed in their rescue but the primal rage he held barely tethered revelled in it, gloried in the opportunity to spill the blood of those who had drawn his brothers. A pistol reported and another, two enemies lay dying for their duty and his wife was black hair and silver dirk beside him, ferocious and so alive.

Porthos behind him laid their brother down, standing tall over him, and Athos had never seen a man look so much like a bear guarding its den, ruination promised in his voice and in his eyes. Like wolves they fought, he and his deadly wife, quick and silent with steel teeth.

Porthos was fighting three but they were outnumbered and men slipped past him and his fearsome wife, and a balding brute had slipped under Porthos to grip Aramis by the hair to drag him out from their protection.

A mistake on his part.

There was a roar behind them and the tide turned, the disgraced company of musketeers sprung from their prisons had arrived and turned the fight. Porthos took down his opponents one after the other and closed his hands over man who had dared touch Aramis. Porthos lifted him, lifted him high then smashing him down with a roar across his bended knee, spine snapping at the impact. A cheer rang from the throats of their comrades, Porthos smile was white and awful as he reclaimed his brothers senseless form, as Milady's steel fangs ripped out the throat of their last foe.

They tumbled out into the first light of dawn as it haemorrhaged against the Parisian sky.

Men were waiting for them, but not foes. Men from the garrison, and they had a dappled pony waiting with a cart. Porthos did not hesitate, laying Aramis down so carefully on the wooden slats and hoisting himself in to crouch low and dangerous over his injured friend.

Athos and his wife mounted their horses and he took the pony's reins, they turned and they were leaving, leaving, they had made it this far against all expectations but aligned with every desperate hope and he couldn't quite believe how their luck had held, although his mind now turned ahead to the difficulties of traversing the city unmolested.

"All for one," he found himself saying, reverently, quietly, but some heard him and cried back "And one for all!"

It wasn't long before the Red Guard tried to stop them. They had only made it a few streets when cries to halt came from behind them. Athos turned in his saddle, sighting down his pistol when suddenly a strangely early tavern brawl spilled out into the streets between them and their pursuers. Men in commoners clothes yet displaying skill in combat blocked the path, posturing and shouting at each other, colliding into each other and staggering on the rebound into their red-garbed foe.

A delighted laugh from Porthos, d'Artagnan's plan sprung perfectly and they made their escape.

Their smiles burned away though, at the sound Aramis made. He was stirring weakly, one arm motionless, the other pushing hopelessly against the iron band around his face, and oh God the noise he made would haunt Athos through his dreams.

"Aramis, hey, hey, you're safe. We got you out." Porthos voice was low and gentle but grief was cresting through its waves. Aramis was too far gone to understand, pawing clumsily at the device, his fingers clawing weakly with no dexterity, a desperate whine chasing the fresh blood from his mouth.

"Stop him, Porthos," he heard himself bark, watching helplessly from his horse, even as the big mans hand closed gently over Aramis' torn knuckles, a flush of pride that he had fought back as long as he were able.

"Please be calm, Aramis. We can't stop yet and we can't get it off until we stop. Please, just wait."

The touch ignited a new desperation in their stricken friend, he fought Porthos weakly, his strength all burned up long before yet he still tried to twist away, their clever brother mindless with fear, a thin and desperate whimper threading the air and he had to dash tears from his eyes to scan for enemies.

Porthos did what he could, lifting him gently but Aramis had been bound for too long and he was choking with terror, bloody screams tearing their hearts to ribbons and people were staring, pointing, and Athos knew they were discovered and he would NOT let the damage Rochefort had done to them be their undoing at this stage of the rescue.

He spurred his horse and dragged on the pony's reins and a ruckus erupted behind them, a musket ball tore through his hat but there was a clash of swords and how many traps had their cunning Gascon laid?

Aramis' screams had changed, airless choking now, and Athos saw that Porthos had enfolded him in his great arms, his forearm a band against their brothers throat, a living noose, Aramis flailed helplessly, leaving trails of blood, his own body refusing to help him tear away the arm strangling him, and Porthos had wrestled stronger children.

It seemed like hours but it could have been no more than a minute before Aramis at last stilled, and Porthos took his arm from his throat as if it burned, checked him for breath, then carefully enfolded him again, pressed a kiss to that stricken brow, and bent over him weeping.


End file.
